My girlfriend and I are in the middle of doing a minor remodel in the kitchen and we are in the middle of figuring out which is the smartest thing to do. I have minor cracks in my foundation and have two options I am looking at. We wanted to poor some self leveling concrete in the kitchen to bring the level even with the tile or lay some wood flooring. The majority of my house is tile and the kitchen was linoleum. Since pulling the linoleum there is now a big lip between the kitchen and dining room.

I was told that if I poor leveling concrete that since the foundation has already cracked that it will transfer the cracks into the leveling concrete when it swells and contracts. Out of the two which is the more wise choice? Self leveling concrete then stain or buy some wood flooring and call it a day?

Nogaro,
Your choice depends on which flooring you really want. Our experience w/ self leveling wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Apparently we aren't the only people who have had this issue. We've always had acid stain floors and really enjoyed them.

After we took down walls and removed tile we were hoping to just throw down self leveling microtopping and acid stain. Nothing is simple. In our case we also had cutback/black mastic stuff that needed to come off. Maybe we used the wrong stuff. We used the Mapei Planipatch and the Mapei's Novoplan 2. Level does not mean smooth. We had to sand it down.

I needed to move the project along. So we just painted and left it with just the planipatch in some areas. It's a process to get it right. We didn't acid stain.

If we weren't in a flood prone area we would have gone for the engineered floating floor. It's quick, easy and satisfying. It is also warmer than concrete flooring, and you guys get snow. We don't - sun sun sun sun - yuck.

The acid stain got us a ton of complements. We wish that we could have finished the project, but we have about 1 more year worth of work to finish rebuilding the hurricane house. I hope this helps w/ your decision making.

I will keep what you have stated in mind, the girl friend really wants to stain the floor so we will see how it goes. So the concrete had to be sanded to smooth it back out huh? No experience on wether or not the new concrete will crack down the road?